MAN IT’S RUTHLESS AND CRUEL OUT THERE!

MAN IT’S RUTHLESS AND CRUEL OUT THERE!

(MONEYBEAT, Steven Russolillo, Forbes, Robert Passikoff)

(CNNMONEY, James O’Toole, Pam Goodfellow, Wall Street Journal, David Segal)

(The Marketing Doctor, Jeff Macke, New York Post, James S. Covert, Air Watch, Frazer Chronicle)

 

If it were me, I wouldn’t care, as long as my job paid the bills, put food on the table, and left a little bit over at the end of the month for me and the misses to do a little late night boogie and sip a cocktail. I’d be satisfied, hell man, I’d be happy. You’d think that gigantic conglomerates like General Motors, Wal-Mart, and J.C. Penny would be safe places to work at, to do just enough to keep the man off your back, kind of hide until retirement came along, and then you’d just drift off happily into retirement.

 

Imagine my disappointment (even though I’m already retired) to learn that one of these rock solid companies would be down-sizing, eliminating 33 stores and over 2,000 positions…..thank God I’m retired, I don’t think that I could handle this kind of news without flinching…..again and again. A move like J.C. Penny shrinking it’s stores and workforce, not just for a little while…..but forever, man, it’s a bad sign for everybody, it’s like the old trickle-down thing, J.C. Penny will touch us all…..and I don’t even shop there anymore.

 

I’ve got the list, five stores in Wisconsin are getting the old ax job, the Badger state got hit harder than anybody else, the next closest is Pennsylvania with three closings, and like a lot of people are thinking right now, “the hell with Pennsylvania, I don’t live there.” But five stores man, that is really bad. Attrition is a bad thing, almost involving nothing, but when you take people’s jobs away from them, it’s kind of like you rip the soul and the innards right out of a guy, you eliminate his source of income, and desperation IS just around the corner.

 

THE SHELVES ARE EMPTY…..ANOTHER BAD SIGN

I’ve noticed that Wal-Mart doesn’t stock their shelves quite the same that they did just a year or so ago. You ask a clerk to check in the back warehouse area, and they give you that vacant look and stock answer, “if it ain’t on the shelves, we ain’t got it,” great customer service…..and I’m sure this clerk will be running for political office one day.

 

I think that several things are contributing to the current slow-down, and the eventual stop with chain business like JCP, first they strategically shut down a few stores, Penny’s had in excess of 1,100 outlets, and of course along with the elimination of store sites, they furlough hundreds of workers…..permanently.  

 

If the moves, seemingly bold in nature, work, and there’s no community retribution, picketers, letters to the editor, and human interest editions in the media, they’ll wait for up to five years, and then cut several more retail locations from their roster…..and a like number of employees, and keep this pattern going until they achieve the numbers of eliminated stores, and furloughed employees so that their profit margin reaches their bottom line!

 

I’m not sure that there’s an alternative here in the good old United States of America of how to conduct business. Whenever losses mount up, and in this case they were mountainous, a company has to take action to save whatever is left…..it’s kind of a protection move. You can call it whatever you want, but business simply won’t remain in an area where there isn’t a profit margin, and they will not continue to practice the same business moves that won’t, or can’t work.

 

 

LOST IN THE SHUFFLE

There are all sorts of practices, procedures, and some key management types that’ll be eliminated, and all sorts of butt covering will take place, and for a time it’ll be dangerous to punch the time-clock, and report for work.  Unfortunately the rank and file will be hit the hardest as thousands will feel the uneasy feeling of hitting the unemployment lines.

 

These rank and file employees are what makes a company strong, or weak, there’s absolutely no other way to express the importance of these people, inevitably it’s these people that are the face of business, especially when there’s so much interaction with the public.

 

JCP lost a boat-load of money in their fiscal year 2013, the company lost $1.34 billion dollars…..and the ax-man began sharpening his good old instrument of attrition. Absolutely nobody was safe, not even CEO Ron Johnson who was unceremoniously dumped in April, 2013, barely 18 months into the job.

 

Throughout Johnson’s leadership of the company, JCP struggled, and in the end, the seeming magic that Johnson had as Vice President of Retail Operations at Apple Incorporated…..for eleven years, 2000 to 2011 was just not enough. Before Apple Inc. Johnson was Vice President of merchandising for Target and Mervyns.

 

However whatever magic that Ron Johnson had going for himself at Target and Apple didn’t seem to work for JCP. The mistakes, the mishandled advertising and marketing blunders, Ron Johnson took full responsibility for.

 

Oh ya, Johnson also took a compensation package worth $53.3 million for 2011, $52.7 million which came in a special stock award. He earned $1.9 million 2012, receiving only 44% of his target cash compensation in view of the company’s poor results, and did not get a stock award…..thank God, he’d have probably had a snickering outbreak all the way to the bank with that payout.

 

This is a perfect example of how huge corporations operate today…..they pay millions, and expect the guy that is hired to roll up his sleeves, step down into the trenches and get his hands dirty, and his $500 imported shirt soiled…..it simply ain’t going to happen.

 

What corporate heads are required to do, what boards of directors are required to do is create a safe, clean work station for their employees with the proper equipment available. These people, in addition are supposed to make good sound business decisions that’ll not only safeguard stock-holders, but will safeguard employees.

 

The employees in return need to show up for work, at the designated place and time, in the proper frame of mind, and put in a full shift of work…..that’s how the system is supposed to work. Shame on the Ron Johnsons of the world, and shame on the JCP board of directors.

 

HAVE A NICE DAY!